A4Tech Bloody B720 Keyboard

Software

A4Tech/Bloody is a relatively small company and I imagine the software team is smaller than that of most larger companies- the Corsairs and Razers for example. It definitely shows right from when you go download the installer from the product page and notice it is a self-extracting zip file:

The installer itself is fairly simple, as it should be:

The driver when opened for the first time opens it and also a widget that can be placed on a desktop:

This does seem straight out of 2007, but the widget can be closed easily. What is not easy, however, is actually using the software program on a high resolution screen. You see, not only is there no scaling at all the program does not even have a full screen mode. So it ended up being super small on my 4K monitor, and forced me to go to 1080p to even see it properly. If you end up using Windows scaling options, then things look bigger but act worse as the menus and lists appear all over the place as opposed to where they should be. On 1440p, things were okay but you may still have to get close to your screen in some places. User experience is definitely lacking here.

Okay, what about those menus? The default screen is “Ultra Core”. It does nothing but display the message you see above. I see an RGB Lighting menu. So let’s see what it does:

Well, there is no RGB lighting control here. So what you get when plugging in the keyboard is mostly it:

Excuse the noisy video, I am really not set up for motion recording here. This demo mode is what Bloody refers to as their Neon Glare backlighting. Any key press and all the LEDs are constantly lit up:

There is indeed multicolor lighting but they are fixed colors per row for a total of 6 colors. You have some brightness control in steps of 25% so you can do 0-25-50-75-100% brightness, but that’s about it. The keycaps do cut down lighting intensity as can be seen above, although the legends are all visible fine as a result of any secondary legends being alongside the primary ones rather than below them.

If you decide you would like to have the Neon Glare lighting consistently, you do have some control there in the software:

So you can choose between no backlighting, Neon Glare or Constant Light. However, there is a 10 min time limit on Neon Glare which is annoying and exists for reasons I can not fathom.

That was lighting then, what about the other menus? This is the “Button menu:

As you can see, it is fairly extensive and has a lot of options. You can re-assign any key in the primary bank of keys (no arrow, number pad etc) to any other key, a mouse button, an action, text, or execute a macro or combo. Bloody has some pre-configured macro and combo actions although you may want to create your own, and that is where the other two menus come in. The macro menu is called Oscar Macro for some reason, but it is again one of the most extensive programs I have seen:

You can edit the existing macros already configured but it’s easier to start from a new file and create the macro you want. You can control the keystrokes and also have the mouse move a few coordinates which can be potentially very powerful in some situations. Say you are playing a game that requires more mouse and keyboard movement. Here then you can not just execute a combo move via keystrokes but also simultaneously move the mouse between or after such combos.

Once you have created a macro (or combo) you will then see it in the drop down list when assigning keys in the Button menu:

Finally, we have a “Super Combo” menu:

This is a combination of everything seen so far. You can create a combo that does a certain action once, as with a macro, or cycle through a combination of actions. Each has the option to press keys on a keyboard or mouse (or both) with controlled delay and also have an option to record macros on the fly that get saved into this bigger combo action. Again, this is a powerful tool for work or leisure if you spend the time needed. But it can also be intimidating to users, and to the point where many may shy away from exploring and stick to the default keyboard by itself. There isn’t a useful manual that can help understand what is going on, and the quick start guide provided simply helps trigger profiles that help deactivate the Windows key or similar. User experience can make or break a software program, and the Bloody Key Dominator needs polishing.